Psychical Research #263676

To compress into a small volume such as the present an outline of psychical research has proved a more formidable task than I anticipated when the Editors asked me to undertake this work. The problems are so new and entangled and the results so startling that it is very difficult to present them in a brief yet readable and convincing form. A superficial sketch of the subject might have been given, but that seemed hardly worthy of the aim which the Editors have in view. I have therefore endeavoured to give a brief survey in separate chapters of the principal lines of work and of the results so far achieved by the Society for Psychical Research. One of the most difficult tasks was to compress into a chapter or two an intelligible View of the laborious work of the Society during recent years in the investigation of automatic writing and the evidence this may afford for survival of bodily death: a critical inqui1y that extends over several bulky Volumes of the Society's Proceedings. Happily my friend, Miss Jane Barlow, D. Litt., who has made a careful study of this subject and is one OI.